Afternoon Drive withStephen Grootes

A Cape Town start up, Yoco, is one of two companies specifically chosen by Dutch business tycoon Willem Willemstein to receive funding for 2017.

Willemstein currently funds private equity firm Velocity Capital.

Yoco which provides card payment terminals for small businesses currently has a workforce of 50 people and over 6,500 merchants across the country.

It recorded R1 billion worth of sales last year.

You can argue that we have started really getting into the scale up mode but for a business like ours you need quite a bit of capital to get to where you need to.

— Katlego Maphai, Chief Executive Officer of Yoco

This is generally a difficult time to get money as a start-up when you transition from seed to growth, and we are very happy with calibre of industry we have managed to attract to our venture.

— Katlego Maphai, Chief Executive Officer of Yoco

70% of the entities currently using the system are small businesses.

Chief Executive Officer, Katlego Maphai says the company has set its sights on moving into Africa over the next two to three years.

When we first started doing this we thought we were solving a technology, mobility issue but when we started to dig deeper we found that it was really hard as a start-up business to get a card machine.

— Katlego Maphai, Chief Executive Officer of Yoco

You needed trading history, and a very clean credit history…It was incredibly difficult to get a machine irrespective of cost. We have made it easy.